


It Takes Two

by overlordpotatoe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21623614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overlordpotatoe/pseuds/overlordpotatoe
Summary: When things with his step brother finally escalate too far and Gabe ends up getting seriously injured, he’s sent to stay with another family for a while. Unfortunately the guy Gabe’s sharing bunk beds with has taken an instant dislike to him for no apparent reason.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

Gabe’s least favourite idiom was  _ it takes two to tango _ . Usually people used it to put blame on both parties when there was a failure of cooperation, but that wasn’t how cooperation worked. Or doing the tango, for that matter. It took two people to make something work, yes, but it only took one to fuck things up.

It definitely didn’t take two to clean the basement rec room. Adam, Gabe’s step brother, was making that clear by not helping at all. Gabe’s step mum, Sally, liked to assign them jobs together ostensibly for the sake of learning to cooperate or family bonding or whatever the fuck. Gabe suspected she just knew Adam wasn’t going to do jack shit either way, but she didn’t want to deal with trying to discipline him or face up to the reality that Gabe was the only one actually doing anything.

A scrunched up tissue bounced off Gabe’s head and he added it to the waste paper basket he’d been collecting rubbish in, determined not to give Adam the attention he was seeking. 

“I’m bored,” Adam announced, stretching himself out as far as he could on the couch, which Gabe was surprised to see was now its entire length. 

Gabe had always been small for his age, but the year and a half he had on Adam had meant that Gabe had always been at least a little bigger than him. Now that Gabe was seventeen he’d accepted that he was destined to be short, but Adam had just hit a growth spurt. He was taller and broader than Gabe now and still growing fast.

Gabe continued ignoring Adam as he dug food wrappers out of the hole in the wall. He knew all of Adam’s hiding spots for trash he couldn’t be bothered to put in the bin. Gabe missed the good old days when they still had two Wiimotes and one less hole in their walls. Of course the blame for that one had been placed on both of them because they’d both been playing, nevermind who threw the damn thing.

“Gaaabe,” Adam whined. “Gabe, I found something to throw out.”

“What?” Gabe asked without bothering to turn around.

“Come here.”

Gabe spared him an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “No. You don’t have anything.”

“I do!” Adam insisted and held something up. “Look.”

Gabe squinted at the small item Adam had in his hand. “What is that?”

“A dead lizard,” Adam declared.

Gabe made a face. That really was what Adam had. He was holding it up by the tail. 

“Gross.” Gabe walked over to him and held out the waste paper basket. “I hope you wash your hands after touching that thing.”

When Adam’s face broke into a sudden smile Gabe knew he’d made a mistake, but it was too late. Adam’s hand wrapped around Gabe’s wrist and he pulled him closer, sending the waste paper basket flying and scattering its contents across the room. For a moment Gabe was just annoyed, but that was replaced with a rapidly growing fear when he tried to pull away and realised Adam was too strong now. Adam realised it too, started to loosen his grip, and then suddenly tightened it again and laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Gabe growled and tried to elbow Adam in the ribs as Adam dragged him down onto the couch. “Fuck off.”

“You want me to let you go?”   
  
“Yes!”

“Then you have to eat the lizard.”

“What?” Gabe started struggling with renewed vigor, but Adam’s grip was firm and he didn’t care if he was hurting Gabe. “This isn’t funny, Adam.”

“It’s pretty funny for me,” Adam said. “Anyway, one way or another you are going to eat this lizard.”

Adam tried to keep holding Gabe down with just one arm so that he could use his other hand to wrench Gabe’s mouth open, and Gabe finally managed to get an elbow into Adam’s ribs. Adam’s grip released long enough for Gabe to get to his feet, but he was already grabbing for Gabe again. Gabe stumbled back, hit something with the back of his knees at the same moment he leant away, and then he was falling backwards.

Everything went scattered and confusing, and when Gabe’s thoughts started to return all he knew for the first few seconds was that he should not move. Adam stood above him staring down, eyes wide with shock, and he looked like the child Gabe had grew up with again and not the monster he was fast becoming.

Gabe could smell the coppery tang of blood, but it was only when Adam took a step closer and Gabe heard glass crunch under his shoe that he realised what had happened. The glass coffee table. He’d fallen. Was he dying? 

God, he hated the smell of blood...

He might have blacked out for a while, then he heard a scream, then he definitely blacked out for a while because the next thing he was he was aware of was a woman in a paramedic uniform leaning over him, telling him not to move.

“He tripped,” Adam was saying. “He was getting up and then he just tripped and fell. I think maybe there was something on the floor and he just tripped on it.”

His mum shushed him and told him to go wait in his room, which seemed wise. The lizard thing had been fucked up, but if Adam had just said it had been an accident in a tussle nobody would have really held it against him. The lies just made it sound like he’d done it on purpose.

Gabe made eye contact with the paramedic. “Am I dying?”

“No, of course not,” she said. “Just stay still, okay? You’ll be fine. Do you know what day it is?”

Gabe considered the question seriously, his eyes wandering around the room. “Summer.”

That was the last coherent thought he had for a while.

#

Gabe didn’t die. He needed a blood transfusion and glass removed from his back and a lot of stitches, but he did not die. When he woke up in the morning the next day, his step mum was sitting next to his bedside.

Or, well, Sally wasn’t technically his step mum, he just usually called her that, and Adam his step brother, to save on explaining. It was either that or say they were some random people he happened to live with, which might have been closer to the truth.

His dad and Sally had been in a relationship… briefly, when Gabe had been seven. His dad had wanted custody in the legal sense but not in the actually having to take care of a kid sense, and his mum had died earlier that year, so Sally had taken Gabe in. He was still pretty sure she’d only agreed to it because she wanted her crazy little asshole of a kid to have a friend. Well, that had turned out fantastic.

“Hey,” Sally said when she saw Gabe was awake, voice cast low and gentle. “How are you doing?”

“I have to sleep on my stomach.”

Also he hurt a lot and would carry the scars from this, both physical and mental, for the rest of his life. But sleeping on his stomach was really uncomfortable and weird.

She gave him a strained smile and then swallowed and looked away. “Gabe… what happened?”

“It was an accident.”

She looked back at him, then nodded as she let out a slow breath. So she hadn’t been sure Adam wouldn’t have done that on purpose. They didn’t really talk about things with him, but it seemed like she did know how bad things were getting.

“He scares me,” Gabe admitted out loud for the first time.

“You said it was an accident.”

“He tried to make me eat a dead lizard.” Gabe turned a smile into a grimace. He didn’t find it funny. He didn’t want her to think he did. It was just… absurd. It was such a fucked up thing to do to someone that it didn’t seem real. “He was holding me down and he’s stronger than me now, and I got away and I fell.”

He half expected her to tell him that he should have just gone along with it, should have just eaten the damn lizard instead of fighting back, but perhaps that was unfair because she didn’t. She looked like she was about to cry. “Things are getting out of hand, aren’t they?”

“It’s not my fault. I’m trying. He—”

“I know,” Sally interrupted before Gabe could get himself worked up. “I know it’s him. I just don’t know what to do.”

“Me either.”

She nodded and let out a long, shaky sigh. “Listen, I have to get to work now. I’ll come and see you again later, okay?”

“Okay.”

She leant down and kissed him on the forehead. “You get some rest.”

#

Sally did not come and see him again, and when it was time for him to leave two days later it was his dad who came to pick him up. Which was fucking weird, because it had been nearly two years since he’d last seen his dad.

“Ready to go?” his dad asked, no questions about his wellbeing, no explanation for his presence.

“Where’s Sally?”

“At work? At home? I don’t know her life,” Gabe’s dad said. “Come on.”

Gabe didn’t move. “Why isn’t she here?”

“She needs a break from you fighting with her kid all the time, so now I have to figure out what to do with you.”

It was sad that Gabe honestly wasn’t sure if Sally had thrown him under the bus or if she’d told the truth and that was just his dad’s assessment of the situation. 

“I don’t want to fight with him, he’s just crazy and aggressive. He tried to make me eat a dead lizard.”

Gabe’s dad looked unimpressed. “He’s what, twelve?”

“He’s nearly sixteen now and he’s bigger than me. What am I supposed to do?”

“Maybe work out occasionally? Or just…” He looked Gabe up and down, “ _ try _ to look a bit less helpless.”

Which was easier fucking said than done, honestly. He’d inherited his dad’s light auburn hair, pale blue eyes, and a smattering of freckles across his nose, but none of his dad’s tall lanky frame. Maybe if he’d dedicated himself to the task of looking as tough as possible he could have done better, but that wasn’t who he was and it wasn’t who he wanted to be.

Gabe shut his eyes for a moment and then let out a long breath as he opened them again. He didn’t have the energy for this argument. He barely felt like he had the energy to be standing just then. “Can we just go?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do.”

The rest of the walk out to the car was silent, and Gabe really didn’t care. He sat in the back and looked through a bag of his stuff Sally had packed for him. His phone, his laptop, and their charges were there, and in amongst the clothes she’d even put in his swim trunks. So she wasn’t expecting him back for a while, then. He wasn’t supposed to swim until he got his stitches out, and he didn’t expect it to be a very comfortable experience for a while after that.

Gabe hadn’t known where his dad lived these days, but he wasn’t surprised when it ended up being within convenient visiting your son distance. Of course he just hadn’t wanted to.

It was a tall building full of tiny, tightly packed apartments The elevator only had a slight smell of pee to it.

The inside of Gabe’s dad’s apartment was small, completely undecorated, and didn’t look like it had ever really been cleaned. It radiated miserly and loneliness. Even the furniture was basic and was probably just the stuff that had come with the place.

“Right, I need to go out for a bit,” Gabe’s dad said before Gabe even had a chance to set his bag down. “There might be something you can eat in the kitchen, but I’d check the dates on stuff first if I were you.”

“Mm.” Gabe flopped face first down onto the sofa. It smelled funny. Not strongly offensive, just sort of musty. By the time the front door shut a couple of minutes later, he was already half asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Gabe awoke, groggy, confused, and his entire body in pain, to the sound of the front door opening. He squinted uncomprehending into darkness, then squeezed his eyes shut when the lights flicked on. He remembered he had painkillers in his pocket and started patting around for them before he even remembered where he was.

“I found somewhere for you to stay,” Gabe’s dad announced proudly, as though the idea of them living in the same house for a short time had been a crisis in desperate need of aversion.

Gabe located the painkillers and made a face as he very carefully got to his feet. Every movement seemed to strain against his stitches.

“They even have some kids around your age, so that’ll be good,” Gabe’s dad continued.

“Great,” Gabe muttered. Because that’d worked out so well with Adam.

“So, are you ready to go?”

Gabe washed the painkillers down with a mouthful of water from the kitchen sink and then shot a look in his dad’s direction that he hoped communicated how done with all this he was. He’d only just woken up. Did he  look ready?

But… he didn’t actually want to stay here and deal with his dad’s shit, either. He wasn’t ready for a new place and new people and everything involved with that, but he wouldn’t become ready for it by sitting around here. If this was happening, he couldn’t see any benefit in delaying it. “Yeah. Okay.”

It wasn’t a very long drive, but Gabe still managed to fall into an uncomfortable half sleep in the car. He wasn’t conscious enough for coherent thought, but he did have enough awareness to be very careful of his back every time the car made a turn.

He was an exhausted wreck by the time his dad pulled up in front of a house on a quiet suburban street, but he honestly didn’t care at this point. All he wanted was to get through the next however long it ended up being before he could go back to sleep.

He changed his mind about not caring what he looked like when he stepped out of the car and locked eyes with a guy around his own age. The guy was standing with one hand on the low gate in front of the house and the other holding the leash of a small, geriatric looking dog.

And, he had to admit, the initial reason for his sudden concern about his appearance was just hormones. The guy had wavy brown hair around ear length that was honestly a mess, but somehow it was working for him. It was impossible to tell if he knew exactly what he was doing or if he was just badly in need of a haircut and was only incidentally making it work because he had good bone structure.

But attraction quickly gave way to a far more rational emotion: fear. This guy was taller than him and definitely in better shape than him. He held intense, unfriendly eye contact with Gabe for several long, awkward seconds before turning his back and leading his dog towards the house. 

He must have heard Gabe’s dad open the gate behind him, but he didn’t turn back around and he shut the door to the house after letting himself in. Gabe’s dad knocked.

The house was sort of old and not in the greatest condition, but it wasn’t run down either. The fence was well overdue for a repaint, but it wasn’t missing any pickets and the lawn had been mown recently. 

Gabe would have had to have stood back to back with the woman who answered the door to figure out which one of them was shorter, but she  felt bigger than him. Well, technically she was in terms of stockiness.

She gave him a sad smile in lieu of a greeting. “You look tired.”

Well, at least everyone in this household wasn’t quietly menacing. 

“I am tired, yes. Also Gabe. That’s my name.”

She stepped aside to let them in. “Welcome to my home, Gabe. I’m Alice.”

“Sorry again for the short notice,” Gabe’s dad said. “Like I told you before, he normally lives with my ex, but he’s not been getting on with her son lately so they need a bit of a break.”

Lately . As though they’d ever gotten on.

“You still haven’t told me how long you expect this break to be,” Alice said.

“I still don’t know, but hopefully not long. She’s stressed out about it right now so I don’t want to push, but I think once she’s had some time to think she’ll realise it’s not as big a deal as she thought. Boys fight. It’s normal.”

“Well, it’s not normal in this house.” She looked Gabe firmly in the eye. “Okay?”

For a moment he just looked back at her, giving her a chance to really take in just how non-threatening he was. “Good.”

She frowned and for a moment she just looked at him, suddenly uncertain. Which was fair. He’d sounded more annoyed than he’d intended, but he hoped she’d gotten his message: he had not, and would not, instigate any conflict.

She shot a quick look at Gabe’s dad before she turned back to Gabe and forced a smile onto her face. “Okay. How about I show you around?”

All he wanted was sleep just then, but it seemed rude to decline. He nodded around a yawn.

“You can help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” Alice said as she led them through a combined kitchen and living room space. Not fancy by any means, but clean enough and homely in a way Gabe wasn’t used to. They had fun magnets on their fridge that they’d used to hold up pictures of smiling people. 

The only thing that had been on the fridge at Sally’s house was one of those magnetic calendars from a real estate company that you get in the mail sometimes. It had been there for three years and none of them had ever actually used it.

Alice put a cushion that had fallen onto the floor back on the couch and tossed a ball into a box of dog toys in the corner. “Did you meet Trist on the way in?”

“The boy with the dog?” Gabe’s dad asked.

“That’s the one. Did he say hello?” She collected a stray mug from the coffee table and took it over to the sink. 

The coffee table was made of wood, Gabe was relieved to see. He was never going to feel safe around a horizontal glass surface again. He’d even started looking at windows with new found unease.

“He did not do that, no,” Gabe told her.

She sighed as she rinsed out one of the mugs and put it on the drying rack. “I thought he seemed like he was in a bit of a mood. I don’t know why. I asked him if he was okay with this and he said it was fine, so I don’t know why he’s being sulky about it.”

“That’s teenagers, I guess,” Gabe’s dad said as though he had any experience whatsoever with dealing with teenagers. “Listen, I’d better head off. I’ll just get that money for you.”

Of course she was being paid to take him in. Well, good, she deserved compensation more than his dad deserved to keep any amount of his money for himself. Still, Gabe deliberately didn’t look while the money changed hands. He didn’t want to know what putting up with him was worth.

Gabe’s dad didn’t bother saying anything to him before he left, and he certainly didn’t bother hugging him or… whatever normal fathers did to show parental affection, Gabe wasn’t sure. Not that a hug was something he would have enjoyed with his back in the state it was.

There was an awkward moment after his dad left where Gabe was certain Alice was about to try to talk to him. She was looking at him and he was pretending to look at a painting on the wall and he was sure she was about to ask… something. She just had that caring mum feel about her, though Gabe wasn’t sure she was actually a mother. Trist had looked around Gabe’s age, and Alice was probably no more than thirty. It was technically possible, but they didn’t even look very alike.

“Hun…” Alice said, and Gabe turned to look at her, bracing himself. She gave him a forced smile. “You’d like to go to bed, wouldn’t you?”

Gabe felt his shoulders relax. “Yes please.”

“Okay, follow me,” she said as she led him through a doorway that led to a hallway. “The bathroom’s on the left, then the girl’s room is next to that. They’re out at a movie right now, but you’ll meet them tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Gabe said. Girls were most likely non-threatening, and that was all Gabe cared about right now.

“And this is Trist’s room.” She rapped her knuckles against a door near the end of the hall. “He has bunk beds, so you’ll be sharing with him.”

“Oh,” Gabe said as neutrally as possible as a wave of apprehension flooded through him.

Within two weeks of moving in with Sally when he’d been just seven years old, she’d been convinced of his need for a lock on his door. Adam had already put a cockroach on his face and shoved a fistful of ice into his underpants while he was sleeping. He’d been a light and anxious sleeper ever since.

Gabe didn’t know Trist, but he did know that he was bigger than Adam, stronger than Adam, and frankly gave off a more openly hostile vibe than Adam. As fucked up as he was, Adam would at least say hi and try to talk to you about his interests before inevitably deciding he wanted to do something terrible to you for no good reason.

When there was no response from inside, Alice opened the door.

Trist was laying on his side on the top bunk, facing the wall. He twisted his head to look at them when the door opened before returning to whatever he was doing without further acknowledging them. His dog was laying on a dog bed in the corner, eviscerating a teddy bear. There was stuffing everywhere.

“Well, that’s Trist,” Alice said, picking a bit of the stray stuffing up off the floor. “He doesn’t talk much, but you don’t seem to either so maybe you’ll be a good match.”

“Sorry,” Gabe said. “I’m tired.”   
  
“I know, love. Here’s your bed now, so you can go to sleep whenever you want. I’m sure Trist won’t mind having an early night or coming out into the living room.” She stared at Trist’s back for a moment, but he didn’t respond. “Do you mind the bottom bunk? Trist normally has that one, but he looks like he’s decided to relocate.”

“Yeah, bottom’s good,” Gabe said. Bottom was great, especially considering there didn’t appear to be a ladder to get up to the top bunk and Gabe was short and injured. He wasn’t sure he was actually physically capable of hauling himself up there just then.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to it, then,” she said. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” Gabe murmured as she left the room. He really did mean it. His dad may have been paying her, but he doubted being nice to him had been a requirement. She was just someone his dad could dump his kid on so that he could spend the bare minimum amount of time with him.

Trist rolled over and gracefully dropped himself down to the floor.

Gabe tensed, expecting a confrontation, but Trist headed to the other side of the room instead.

“You can put your stuff in here.” Trist gave the door of a cupboard a couple of taps as he walked past, not bothering to actually look at Gabe. He opened the door of the cupboard next to it, gave Gabe a quick glance over, and then stretched up to tuck the spiral bound book he was holding on a shelf that would be out of Gabe’s reach. “This is my stuff. Don’t touch my stuff.”

Right. Well, that had seemed almost slightly friendly for a few seconds there. “Okay, I won’t.”

Trist didn’t bother to further acknowledge him before leaving the room and shutting the door behind himself.

Gabe let out a long breath. He was probably going to get murdered in his sleep.

The dog, oblivious to the tension, kicked up her legs as she got comfortable sprawled out almost obscenely on her back. Gabe wished he could sleep on his back.

Gabe took his jeans off but kept his shirt on. He didn’t know much about what kind of person Trist was, but he knew that if he’d left his vulnerable, stitch covered back exposed to Adam he would never have made it through the night without being fucked with in some way. Plus he just… didn’t really want anyone to see it.

The pain killers had kicked in about as well as they ever would. They toned the pain down enough that it was tolerable as long as he didn’t move at all.

He turned the lights off, lay down, and stared at the wall, exhausted yet also the widest awake he’d been since the coffee table incident. He wanted to go home where at least he knew when he was and wasn’t safe, even if not being safe was something that happened a lot of the time.

A few minutes later Gabe heard a scratching sound at the edge of the bed. He squinted into the darkness at the little dog who was trying, and failing, to get her feeble old body up onto the bed.

Gabe got out of bed and leant down to help her up, which wasn’t a great time for his back. He didn’t even know if she was allowed in the bed, but she seemed to think she was and that was good enough for him.

The bed was definitely not made more comfortable by the addition of a dog laying on his legs and licking itself, but it did make him feel safer. Not because he expected an elderly dog to defend him against her owner if shit went down, but rather because he assumed Trist wouldn’t want his dog in the middle of any drama. Of course he didn’t know if that was true or not, but believing it allowed his mind to start to go foggy and finally sink down into sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Something touched Gabe’s leg and he reflexively twisted onto his back and kicked out, then nearly fell out of bed when the sound of a dog’s indignant yelp and the pain of his stitches scraping against the bedsheets hit him at the same time. He squinted his eyes open to see Trist standing near the end of the bed, leant over slightly towards his dog with one hand braced on the frame of the top bunk. He was watching Gabe with narrowed eyes.

He’d obviously just accidentally touched Gabe when trying to get his dog. And then Gabe had kicked the dog. Whoops. She didn’t actually look hurt, fortunately, just startled and confused. 

Trist raised his eyebrows in a way that felt like a challenge, then bent down and picked up his dog and carried her out of the room. 

Gabe let out a long, slow breath. Well, now Trist had an actual reason to hate him, so that way great. But… Trist hadn’t actually  _ done _ anything beyond look annoyed. Adam probably would have lashed out reflexively just because he was angry and some of the guys at school who liked to harass Gabe would have leapt at any excuse to punish him, but Trist was at least coming at hating him from a different and so far less violent angle.

In an odd way, that gave it an entirely different kind of sting. When someone was cruel towards him it was easy to hate them back, and then the fact that they hated him as well didn’t mean much. They were assholes. He didn’t  _ want _ them to like him. He didn’t want them to hate him, either, but he wasn’t really offended that they had a problem with him.

But Trist… Gabe didn’t hate Trist. Not yet. He hadn’t really done anything that bad so Gabe still wanted him to like him. And, okay, maybe part of that was because he was quite attractive.

Gabe hadn’t eaten anything since he’d left the hospital yesterday so he was starving, but first he desperately needed a shower. Things were getting a bit crusty around his stitches and his shirt had started sticking to his back in a way that made him shudder.

A bit of that stickiness was blood, an examination in the bathroom mirror revealed. His dramatic wake up hadn’t been great for the healing process. He hadn’t managed to actually tear anything open, though, so it was probably fine.

The welcome smell of cooking pancakes greeted Gabe as he headed out into the main living area. A girl a few years younger than him looked up from the stove and smiled at him in greeting. The large, round glasses she wore seemed to dominate not just her face, but her entire slight form. Her ginger hair had been done into two long plaits down the back of her head.

“Good morning,” she said, her words enunciated in a careful, exact way that gave Gabe the impression she was talking around a speech impediment.

“Hey.” Gabe sat down on one of the stools that lined the living room side of the kitchen counter. “I’m Gabe. I’m guessing Alice told you why I’m here?”

Though, come to think of it, he wasn’t sure Alice knew much about why he was  _ really _ here. His dad must have told her something, but Gabe doubted much of it had been the truth.

She nodded. “I’m Bee. Would you like some pancakes?”

“Bee, I would love some pancakes.”

Bee hadn’t just made pancakes, she’d made an exotic assortment of pancakes. There was one with chocolate chips and one with blueberries and a plain one she topped with lemon juice and sugar for him.

“Uh… do you have any painkillers?” Gabe asked when she turned back to her cooking.

“Oh, sure,” she said as she redirected her path to a drawer to the side of the stove.

“Thanks,” he said. “I have a headache.”

Which, now he came to think of it, was actually true. He just hadn’t noticed until then because so many other parts of him hurt much more.

From her easy acceptance of his excuse Gabe was guessing she at least wasn’t aware of his whole back situation. She brought him a couple of aspirin and a glass of orange juice and then returned to cooking.

Gabe washed the painkillers down and then set about devouring a couple of the pancakes. He then folded his arm on the counter, rested his head on it, and slowly fed himself a third while Bee continued cooking.

“Good morning!” Gabe heard someone announce from behind him. He tried to roll his head around to see, but in the end he had to admit defeat and lift it.

Of the three people Gabe had met up until now, none of them had really looked alike. Bee was tiny and ginger haired, Trist was tall and had wavy brown hair, and Alice was short and heavy framed with straight hair so dark it was nearly black. Gabe didn’t know what their family situation was, if that was even what was going on at all, but this girl definitely resembled Alice. She was also wearing Winnie the Pooh pyjamas.

“Good morning,” Gabe said in return. “I’m Gabe and these pancakes are the only truly good thing in my life right now.”

She pulled out the stool next to him and sat down. “I’m Sophie and that’s sad.”

Gabe made a face. “Yeah. It was meant to be a joke but I actually just said a true sad thing and it wasn’t very funny. Whoops.”

Gabe heard the front door open and turned his head to see Trist shut the door and then bend to let his dog off her leash.

“Sadie!” Sophie said in a high pitched voice and the dog wiggled excitedly and ran over as fast as her very old body would allow. Trist followed much less enthusiastically. He seemed determined not to look at or in any way acknowledge Gabe.

Bee poked Trist in the arm with her spatula when he took a pancake and immediately shoved it in his mouth. “Just get a plate and sit down.”

Trist shook his head. “Nah, I gotta go now.”

Sophie looked up from feeding Sadie pieces of pancake. “I thought you didn’t have work today?”

“Other stuff,” Trist said, already heading back towards the front door.

“Other stuff,” Sophie echoed skeptically, but Trist had already exited the conversation. When the front door shut behind him, she turned to look at Gabe. “Okay, what was that?”

Gabe held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged. “How would I know? I don’t know him.”

“Yeah, and I do, and he’s not normally like  _ that _ . Quiet, sure, but that was downright unfriendly. Did something happen between you two?”

“Uhh… I kicked his dog?”

“You  _ what _ !?” Sophie shouted way too close to Gabe’s ears.

“Not intentionally!” Gabe clarified, leaning away from her because  _ loud _ , and also kind of scary. “She was sleeping on the end of my bed and I guess Trist touched me when he tried to get her and woke me up and I kicked out reflexively, and yeah. But he’s hated me since he first laid eyes on me, so I don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

“I think he might just be less comfortable around other guys,” Bee suggested, placing a pancake she’d drawn a smiley face on with chocolate sauce onto Gabe’s plate.

“Oh, hmm,” Sophie said. “Yeah, maybe. I mean we don’t exactly have many guys around, so I guess I wouldn’t know.”

“He lived with his dad and his brother and then he moved here because things went badly with them,” Bee said as she poured more pancake mix into the pan. “He might just feel less safe around guys because of that.”

“Yeah, it’s probably not personal,” Sophie agreed. “You seem pretty harmless.”

“Being non-threatening is my greatest skill and weakness,” Gabe said. “So are all of you related somehow, or…”

“We’re cousins and Alice is our aunt,” Sophie said. “Well, that’s the short version, anyway. Alice is my aunt and the rest is more complicated.”

Bee turned away from the stove and leant back against the kitchen counter. “My dad is Alice’s brother, but he was adopted so I’m not related to them by blood. And then Trist is my cousin on my mother’s side, so he  _ is _ related to me but not to Alice or Sophie.”

“But basically, cousins,” Sophie said.

Bee nodded. “Basically.”

“I’m not related to you guys, am I?” Gabe asked. If he was, it was going to make him sort of checking out Trist really awkward.

“Uh, no?” Sophie said.

“I didn’t think so,” Gabe said. “It just seems like the sort of thing my dad would completely forget to tell me and I don’t actually know how he knows Alice.”

“I think they were briefly housemates many years ago,” Sophie said.

“Oh. Cool.”

Great. It always gave Gabe such a nice feeling inside when he found out about another person his dad had made more of an effort to maintain a connection with than his own son.

“Anyway, we thought today since you’re still sick we’d just relax and watch some movies, maybe order some pizza for dinner,” Sophie said.

So she did have some idea that something was wrong with him. But… _still_ _sick_. That didn’t sound like she knew he’d been physically injured. Maybe they were just being tactful, though. There were stitches on the back of his hand and in a few places on his arms and nobody had asked about them yet.

“We were actually going to do that anyway, but now we can pretend we’re being considerate instead of just lazy,” Bee added.

“It’s true. It’s how we spend most of our days.”   
  
“Well, we don’t normally have pizza,” Bee corrected. “But Alice has a work dinner tonight, so we get a treat.”

“Yeah, she won’t be home until late,” Sophie said. “Which would be cool, except we like her and enjoy her company.”

“That’s the unfortunate thing about having a cool parental figure,” Bee said. “You don’t really enjoy their absence.”

“Pizza, though.”

“Mm,” Bee agreed. “I do enjoy pizza.”

Gabe definitely hadn’t enjoyed whenever Sally had been absent. Adam was always worse when he was completely unsupervised. Normally Gabe only had a couple of hours alone with him before Sally got home, but it was summer holidays right now so it had been half of his waking hours. 

It hadn’t been fun. Things had gotten so bad he’d actually started missing the days when they were young enough to go to vacation care, and he’d  _ hated _ vacation care. It wasn’t like other kids had ever been particularly nice to him, but at least they’d been limited by adult supervision. Unlike Adam, this summer.

They finished shoving pancakes into their faces and moved to the living room to start their movie marathon. It was actually surprisingly chill. Gabe didn’t know why that was surprising, except that he didn’t normally hang out with people. The guys at the all boys school he went to seemed to take Gabe’s non-threatening nature as the biggest threat of all, and he didn’t really know anybody outside of school, so the only person his age he had any kind of a relationship with was Adam.

And… that wasn’t  _ always _ bad. It was hard to remember that sometimes, and especially right now when Gabe’s back was serving as a constant reminder that Adam had tried to physically force him to eat a dead lizard, but  _ sometimes _ they had fun together. Sometimes Adam even did nice things for him. Near the end of the school year, when Adam had been well into his growth spurt, he’d even inexplicably gotten into a fight with some guy for calling Gabe a name. As if he hadn’t done way worse shit to Gabe himself.

It was that sort of thing that had let Gabe convince himself that they were just like real, normal brothers for such a long time. Sure, he’d tell himself, they fought a lot, but didn’t all brothers? They were there for one another when it really counted. But somewhere deep down he’d been aware that was bullshit. If he’d really believed everything was fine, he would have told on Adam like a normal brother instead of hiding bruises and pretending he’d cracked the screen on his phone himself by accidentally dropping it.

And look where he was now. Sent away from the only home and the only family he’d had since he was seven because he’d had the audacity to be a victim. Because what was Sally going to do? She didn’t know how to control Adam and if one of them had to go, it wasn’t going to be her own son.

But this, here, watching movies with two virtual strangers? Oddly, this felt like family. Bee and Sophie joked back and forth and laughed unselfconsciously. All three of them decided on what to watch together, and it didn’t turn into an argument or one person settling so that there wouldn’t be an argument. They shared their favourites Gabe hadn’t seen and rewatched one they all said they’d liked. It was just… nice.

At the same time, though, it hurt because it wasn’t his. They were kindly letting him be part of it, but that was only temporary. Alice had made it clear this was a short term thing and Trist didn’t want him here at all. Soon he would have to leave and maybe he’d go somewhere new or maybe he’d go back to Sally’s place and nothing would be any better. This feeling of safety, of easy companionship, just wasn’t something he could keep.

At around six o’clock, Sophie checked the time on her phone and groaned. “Where the hell is Trist?”

“I don’t know,” Bee said. “I tried texting him earlier, but he didn’t reply.”

“Well, there’s only one thing for it, then.” Sophie sat up properly on the couch, tapped the screen of her phone a couple of times, and held it up to her ear. “I’m calling him.”

“Oooh,” Bee said, but she didn’t bother sitting up and she didn’t sound that impressed.

A few seconds later, Sophie lowered her phone and frowned at it. “That bitch hung up on me.”

Bee did sit up now, and frowned. “Wow. Maybe he’s more bothered than I realised. I’ll try calling him.” She got out her phone as well, but she didn’t have it held to her ear for long before she dropped it back down. “ Huh. He hung up on me too.”

“Hmm.” Sophie turned her attention to Gabe. “Do you have a phone?”

“Yeah.” Gabe retrieved his phone from his pocket. “Why?”

“He won’t recognise your number.”

“Uh, I think he’ll probably guess it’s us since we both just tried to call him,” Bee pointed out.

“That’s why we wait, like, half an hour,” Sophie said. “He’s always complaining that he has to answer all the calls he gets on his phone, even though it’s usually scammers, because it  _ could _ be work. In half an hour he might  _ suspect _ it’s us, but he won’t be sure enough that he’ll ignore it.”

“That will probably work,” Bee admitted. “But I don’t know. Maybe we should just leave him alone if that’s what he wants?”

“He can brood all he likes after he tells us when he’ll be home and if he wants pizza.”

“Fair. I am a bit worried about him.”

So they watched another half an hour of the movie they had on and then Sophie waggled her fingers at Gabe to request his phone.

It was Bee who took it when he got it out, though. “I will call him.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” Sophie said, but she paused the movie and stared intently at Bee as she made the call.

“Hi Trist, it’s me,” Bee said into the phone, and then paused to listen. “I borrowed Gabe’s phone.” She paused again. “I know, but we wanted to make sure you were okay and ask if you want pizza.” She was silent again for a moment and nodded to herself. “Okay. When will you be back?” She paused again. “Well, if you’re not back when I go to bed I won’t be able to sleep.” Another pause and then she smiled. “Okay. We’ll see you then. Bye, Trist.”

“Well?” Sophie asked as Bee handed Gabe his phone back.

“He said that he’s fine, which I don’t believe, that he does want pizza but just put it in the fridge for him to have later, and that he’ll be back by nine.”

“Did he apologise for being such a difficult bitch?”

“He did not do that, no.”

“Man.” Sophie fiddled with the remote, but she didn’t unpause the movie. “Do you have any idea what’s going on with him?”

Bee scrunched up her tiny face. “I have ideas, but they’re either wrong or not things I should be sharing.”

“Does it have anything to do with whatever shit went down with his family?” Sophie turned to look at Gabe. “To catch you up, Bee knows what happened there and I don’t.”

“I don’t  _ know _ what happened,” Bee said. “I… suspect. But I’m not a gossip so I keep my knowings and my suspectings to myself.”

“Boring but respectable,” Sophie said as she unpaused the movie.

Gabe looked down at his phone. Trist’s number was still on the screen. He closed the window, put his phone down, then picked it back up again a second later, went into recently called numbers, and saved it. He hesitated on the ‘name’ field. If anyone took a look in his contacts and saw it there under Trist’s name they’d have questions. He saved it under ‘emergency’ instead, because that was the only situation he could imagine actually calling Trist.


	4. Chapter 4

Trist returned home just before nine, as promised. The girls seemed to have made a silent agreement not to make a big deal about it, and Gabe certainly wasn’t going to be the one to mess that up. Trist still seemed determined not to acknowledge him.

Trist came back from the kitchen with a plateful of cold pizza. For a moment Gabe thought Trist was about to sit down on the end of the couch he was laying on so he moved his feet, but Trist ignored him and sat on the armchair instead. His eyes were firmly on the end of the Spider-Man movie they were watching and Gabe got the impression that if anyone so much as spoke to him he’d be out of there.

Well, fine. If he didn’t want Gabe around, that could be arranged — at least temporarily. Gabe was tired anyway.

Gabe ignored the protests of his achy body as he hauled himself to his feet. “Okay, I’m off to bed.”

“Aw, okay,” Bee said. “Goodnight.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Sophie added.

Gabe carefully stepped over Sadie where she was fast asleep on the floor, sprawled out in an undignified manner on her back. “I hope there aren’t actual bedbugs.”

“Well… probably not,” Sophie said. “Definitely fleas, though.”

“I can deal with fleas.”

Unfortunately, the combination of banter and the struggle to not simply fall asleep on the closest available surface had been too much for Gabe’s brain. He’d allowed himself to get distracted and only realised when it was too late to change his path without being even more awkward that he was going to walk in front of Trist. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a big deal, but the tenuous peace they had going just then seemed to be entirely based on Trist not having to look at him.

Still, he expected Trist to look at his pizza or find something else to distract him for two seconds while Gabe passed. It would have been better for both of them.

No such luck. Trist locked eyes with Gabe, one eyebrow quirking up in a way Gabe would describe as challenging, but not exactly  _ threatening _ . Gabe quickly averted his gaze and hurried past 

Gabe just wanted to collapse into bed and sleep forever, but he forced himself to take a shower and dig out a clean shirt. He was doing his best to avoid getting some kind of horrific infection.

Or, well, not his  _ best _ . But the best he could do while not letting anyone else in on the whole situation he had going on with his back. He didn’t even really know why he didn’t want anyone to know. He just… didn’t. He felt oddly ashamed of it, even though he knew that made no sense. 

But he wasn’t going to analyse that. He was going to sleep.

At least, that had been the plan.

He was certainly tired enough. His brain was trying so hard to shut itself off that he couldn’t hold a thought together for more than a couple of seconds, but every time he started truly sinking deeper his stitches would start itching or he’d decide the position he was laying in on his stomach wasn’t working for him and try to find a more comfortable one.

He didn’t know if it had been two hours or fifteen minutes when Trist came in to go to bed, but however long it had been Gabe was still frustratingly awake.

Gabe hadn’t known it was possible to simultaneously feel this close to and this far from sleep. He had settled into something that was very nearly sleep, but his brain refused to sink deeper into it or rise out of it.

And then, to make matters worse, Sadie started scratching at the side of the bed to be let up. Oh no, Gabe wasn’t falling for that one again. Trist already hated him enough without him kicking his dog a second time. He’d just ignore her until she gave up.

Unfortunately, that only made her think she had to work harder to get his attention. The scratching became more insistent and she started letting out little wuffs and whines.

After a few minutes of this Trist let out a long sigh and the bed shook as he climbed down. Gabe heard him bend down and then felt Sadie being deposited onto the end of the bed before Trist climbed back up again. Sadie lay down with her head on Gabe’s leg, satisfied.

Well, okay then. If she ended up getting kicked again, Trist only had himself to blame. He knew the risk.

The last conscious thought Gabe was aware of was that having a dog sleeping on his leg was going to make it even more difficult to get to sleep, and then he woke up and there was sunlight coming in through the window and Sadie was gone. 

Apparently all he’d really needed to get to sleep was something to get him to stop fidgeting around in a futile attempt to get comfortable for two minutes. 

By the time Gabe had showered and dressed, Sophie and Bee were already out in the living room watching an episode of an anime Gabe didn’t recognise. There was a Lego set laid out on the table that they’d started to put together, but their attention was mostly on the TV.

“Good morning,” Bee said. “How are you feeling?”

“A little better,” Gabe said, though it came out sounding uncertain. He actually was feeling slightly less exhausted and sore, but he still didn’t know what she thought was wrong with him. How long was whatever she thought he had supposed to last? How severe was it? Was he contagious?

She seemed satisfied by that response, in any case. “There’s cereal if you want some.”

Mm, yes, he did want some cereal. Almost as badly as he wanted some painkillers. He headed to the kitchen to get both.

Their painkiller supplies were running worryingly low and he didn’t know what to do about that. He’d have to explain why he needed them so badly if he wanted to ask someone to get more for him, and that would require him to either tell the truth or commit to a lie more solidly than he wanted to.

But that was a problem for later. There were still enough left to get him through another couple of days

It was another laid back day, this time of marathoning anime and putting together the Lego set. Although the second part ended up being a far more massive task than Gabe had anticipated. He hadn’t played with Lego since he was a kid, and this was nothing like anything he’d had. This was a castle set with hundreds of pieces. It was a bit too much for Gabe’s tired brain, but the girls were into it and he liked helping them find the pieces they were looking for while they did the hard job of putting it all together.

By the time Trist got home from work early in the afternoon, they were well into the castle foundations. It didn’t look like much, but it had taken them hours to get as far as they had.

Bee tried to waved Trist over. “Come help us.”

Trist shook his head, heading towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “I just got back from work.”

“And, what, Lego is just too stressful until you’ve had some downtime?” Sophie asked, but Trist had already gone. She sighed loudly. “Why are boys so difficult?”

“Hey, don’t lump me in with his shit,” Gabe said.

“I’m sorry he’s being this way,” Bee said. “He’s really not normally like this.”

Gabe handed her the Lego piece she’d been looking for. “So you keep saying.”

“Thanks.” She pressed it down into the correct place in the structure. “He really isn’t, though. I have a lot of health problems, and before I moved here he used to come over and take me to the hospital in the middle of the night when I was worried about something and my parents wanted to wait until morning. He never once complained about it or asked for anything in return. And I moved up here about six months before he did, and he drove me all the way here himself. It was like a six hour drive.”

“She’s right,” Sophie admitted. “He can be kind of aloof and in his own head a bit sometimes, but he’s not normally like this. This feels actually kind of mean.”

“I didn’t  _ do _ anything,” Gabe insisted.

“Well, obviously,” Sophie said. “That’s what makes it mean. I just don’t get why he’s doing it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabe said. 

He didn’t feel like micro analysing it. Most guys didn’t like Gabe, and the fact that Trist was apparently a really nice guy to other people didn’t make Gabe feel better at all. He much preferred to believe anyone who disliked him for absolutely no reason was just an asshole. He struggling self esteem couldn’t handle the possibility that they weren’t and it was actually just some sort of instinctive response he elicited in some otherwise perfectly nice people.

“I mean, did you say anything to him when you first met, or… I don’t know.” Sophie made a face. “I don’t even really know what would offend Trist, to be honest.”

“It’s fine, it doesn’t matter,” Gabe repeated as he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m tired so I’m going to go have a nap, okay?”

It had mostly just been an excuse to get out of the conversation, but now that he’d gone through the exertion of standing up he realised it was also just the damn truth. He also realised, only once he was already halfway down the hallway, that Trist was in the bedroom.

Oh well. Gabe just wouldn’t look at him, as Trist loved to do to Gabe, and then Trist could glare at him all he wanted and Gabe wouldn’t have to know about it.

As expected, Trist didn’t acknowledge him when he entered the room, and as planned Gabe didn’t acknowledge him either. He quickly got into bed and tucked his face against the crook of his arm to block out some of the daylight.

It was too hot, he was itchy, and he was sore. None of this was conductive to sleep. There was a quiet scratching sound coming from the top bunk, though, and Gabe found it oddly soothly. Was Trist writing? No, it sounded like he was drawing.

Gabe’s impression of reality was that he had been uncomfortably awake for around half an hour, but when he finally stretched out and cracked his eyes open he found the bedroom light was on and there was only darkness through the crack of window the curtains revealed. The bedroom door was open and he could no longer hear the soothing scratch of Trist’s pencil.

Gabe felt around under his pillow for his phone to check the time, but somehow managed to knock it down the side of the bed instead. He groaned as he reached his hand down between the wall and the mattress, already anticipating how much his abused body was going to hate him for the awkward positions he was going to have to put it in to get his phone back.

His fingers hit something, but it wasn’t his phone. It was… paper? He pulled the object out and held it up so he could see. It was a drawing of a dog, done in coloured pencils. No, not just a dog — Sadie specifically. On the back there was blu-tack, as though it had once been stuck to the wall.

“Where did you get that?”

Gabe physically jumped and looked up to see Trist standing in the doorway.

“Uhh…” was what ended up coming out of Gabe’s mouth. 

The look Trist gave him wasn’t exactly threatening, but it definitely wasn’t friendly.

Gabe held it out to him. “It was down the side of the bed.”

Trist looked skeptical for a second — but only a second — before he seemed to realise that Gabe’s explanation had been reasonable. He strode towards Gabe and reached out to snatch the drawing back.

Gabe reflexively leant his body away and held the drawing further out and for a moment Trist stopped, his gaze shifting from the drawing to Gabe’s face. His attention then returned to the drawing — or, no, his eyes were on the stitches on the back of Gabe’s hand. The whole sequence played out over just a few seconds, but Gabe saw the look on Trist’s face before he took the drawing and turned around. He’d put a few things together.

A sad, lonely little part of Gabe hoped that Trist would be sympathetic, that this had been some sort of bonding moment and Trist would be nicer to him now. Of course, that had literally never happened to him before. In his experience, whenever some guy who’d decided he didn’t like Gabe on sight saw some kind of weakness in him, there was only one thing it inspired them to do: exploit it.

The girls seemed to think that Trist was nice, a good person, but perhaps that was just how the people in the lives of the guys who hated Gabe always felt. They weren’t usually friendless loners, and who would be friends with someone who acted the way they did towards Gabe?

“I’m sorry,” Gabe said as Trist reached up to tuck the drawing on his high shelf, though he didn’t know why he said it. He wasn’t sorry and he wasn’t scared enough to pretend to be. He was just tired.

Trist shot him a look over his shoulder, and Gabe couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or just confused.

“It was a good drawing,” Gabe said quietly, mostly to himself, when Trist turned back around to get something down from the shelf.

Trist didn’t respond, which was honestly what Gabe had expected. What he hadn’t expected was Trist turning around to look at him, really  _ look _ at him, two minutes later. He didn’t look angry, just… unhappy.

“Just… don’t touch my stuff, okay?” Trist said, voice surprisingly soft and genuinely imploring.

Gabe nodded quickly, though he didn’t know why he felt so nervous. This was the least hostile Trist had ever been to him. “I won’t. I promise.”

Trist nodded, switched the light off, and left the room.


	5. Chapter 5

Pain woke Gabe up early the next morning and he ventured into the kitchen, still half asleep, in search of painkillers. Alice was sitting on one of the kitchen stools, eating a bowl of cereal and looking at something on her phone.

She looked up and then smiled when she saw it was him. “Good morning, hun.”

“Good morning,” Gabe mumbled in return.

He’d been going to bed so early and waking up so late that this was the first time he’d actually seen her since the night he’d arrived.

“How have you been?” she asked as Gabe headed into the kitchen to get his painkillers.

“Fine,” Gabe said, because he obviously wasn’t good and anything more negative would only lead to questions.

“How have things been going with Trist?”

Gabe made a face as he washed down his painkillers with a mouthful of water. “He obviously doesn’t like me, but he’s…” Gabe trailed off. He didn’t really know what Trist was. “It’s like he really doesn’t want me around, but he’s doing his best not to take that out on me.”

She gave Gabe a sympathetic smile. “Do you want me to talk to him?”   
  
“No,” Gabe said quickly. “It’s fine. He doesn’t have to like me.”

“Okay, I’ll leave it alone for now. Just let me know if you need me to get involved. You should be able to feel safe and welcome here.”

For a moment Gabe just looked at her because yeah, that sounded completely reasonable, but nobody had ever said anything like that to him before. Even when something wasn’t his fault, it was always his problem to deal with. That was just how life was.

But what if it wasn’t life? What if it was just adults who didn’t want to help?

“Thanks,” Gabe said, and it didn’t really come through in his voice but he really meant it.

He didn’t think he’d ever ask for her help. He didn’t really need it. Trist wasn’t hurting him and nobody could force him to like Gabe. But the fact that she’d offered, the fact that she sincerely believed he deserved to be treated better… that meant something.

#

Gabe looked down at the pile of his belongings that he’d pulled out of his bag and scattered on the floor around him and let out a sigh. He just wanted to take a shower and go to bed, but he didn’t have a single clean shirt. He’d thought he had plenty, but he’d been going through them so fast that he’d run through his supply without realising. 

He was supposed to be keeping his stitches bandaged and using ointment on them, but he’d never actually gone to get any of that stuff and it wasn’t like he’d be able to do it himself when his injuries were on his back anyway. So he’d been showering twice a day and changing his shirt whenever things started to get gross, which was quite often. 

Gabe picked up one of the dirty shirts he hoped wasn’t too bad, sniffed it, and made a face. He was definitely going to get some kind of horrible infection.

Trist, who up until now had been laying on his bed sketching and determinedly ignoring Gabe, finally rolled over to look at him. “What are you doing?”

Gabe was so taken off guard by the fact that Trist was actually acknowledging him that it took him a moment to figure out what to say. “Uh… trying to find a clean shirt. But I have none.”

“You know shirts don’t become unwearably dirty after five hours, right? Especially if you’re just sitting around watching movies.”

A fretful, “Mm,” was all the response Gabe could think to give to that, because that was true generally and he didn’t want to explain why he really did need to change his shirts regularly.

“I don’t even know why you’d want to wear a shirt to bed. It’s way too hot.”

“Good and valid suggestions,” Gabe said, because he didn’t want to discourage Trist from talking to him, but he continued sorting through his dirty shirts in search of the one that was the least likely to give him an infection.

Trist let out a sigh of annoyance and climbed down from the bunk, obviously done with Gabe’s shit. Which was unfortunate. Gabe really was happy Trist was actually acknowledging his existence, but he was too tired to figure out a way to both not look weird and not reveal why he was actually doing the things he was doing.

Something hit Gabe on the back of the head and he reflexively spun around and held his hands up in a defensive position, only to realise it had been a shirt and Trist had thrown it at him. Oh.

Gabe picked it up off the floor and turned to watch Trist, who was already climbing back onto the bunk. “Thank you?”

“Keep it. I think it’s too small for me now, anyway. Probably still too big for you, though.”

“Probably,” Gabe murmured, because he couldn’t really tell if that had been intended as a dig at his height or just facts. Regardless, he added a more genuine, “Thanks.”

Trist ignored him.

#

There were officially no more painkillers. Gabe had lucked out last night and found a couple of paracetamol in the back of a drawer to get him through the night, but a thorough search this morning had yielded no more.

He heard a door open and shut down the hall and quickly started putting everything back into the kitchen drawers. He’d actually been the first one up for once, so he’d been able to conduct his search without witnesses.

Trist entered the living room wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and Gabe quickly averted his eyes, but not before they did a reflexive sweep of his body. Hopefully Trist hadn’t noticed that.

“Should I be worried that you’re searching through our kitchen drawers at six in the morning?” Trist asked.

Oh. Yeah. This did look kind of suspicious. “I’m looking for painkillers.”

“There should be some aspirin.”

“There was, but I used it all.”

“Then I guess there aren’t any.”

“I had come to that conclusion, yeah.” Gabe put the last of the stuff back into the drawer and slid it shut with more force than he’d intended. “Guess I’m going back to bed, then.”

Gabe did go back to bed, but he didn’t go back to sleep. He  _ hurt _ . He always hurt these days, and he’d just kind of accepted that, but he hadn’t realised how bad it was underneath the painkillers. Sure, they’d always worn off by morning, but there was a difference between dealing with it for an hour or so until he could get more medication in his system and dealing with the full intensity of it all day and knowing there was no relief in sight.

The girls clearly knew something was up, but they seemed to also know he’d rather they didn’t ask. Bee instead expressed her concern by making him a milkshake, which somehow managed to make him simultaneously feel better and sicker. He had needed to eat something, and the milkshake had been delicious enough to make it easier, but it probably wasn’t the best thing for him to put into his fragile system.

He was a bundle of regrets awkwardly half curled up on the couch when Trist returned from work that afternoon and lobbed something at his head. Gabe patted around for the object, a small cardboard box, and then held it in front of his face so he could read the text on the front: Aspirin.

Well.  _ Well _ .

He immediately went to the kitchen to shove some aspirin into his body.

And then he went to find Trist, who had disappeared already.

Trist was back in his room on the top bunk with his sketch pad out again. He didn’t look up as Gabe entered the room.

“Uh, hey,” Gabe said.

Trist ignored him.

Right.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” Gabe continued anyway. “For the painkillers.”

Trist spared him half a glance. “...Okay?”

“I really appreciate it.”

“You know I work in a supermarket, right?”

“Yeah, but, I mean. I needed them and you got them.”

“We all use painkillers, Gabe. If we run out of milk tomorrow are you going to interpret it as some huge personal favor if I pick up more?”

Gabe let out an annoyed sigh, partly because Trist was a bitch but mostly because he was right. But he  _ was _ a bitch. “You’re so tsundere.”

Trist actually looked at him then. “Excuse me?”

“It means—” Gabe started to say, and then he realised he couldn’t come up with a definition for it that he actually wanted to say. “Nevermind.”

“No, I  _ know _ what it means, and you can fuck right off,” Trist said as he slapped his sketchbook shut.

“I was only kidding,” Gabe said, but it was to Trist’s back as he left the room.

Gabe followed him out, hoping to apologise, though he didn’t know how he’d manage that without sounding condescending. Like, honestly.  _ Honestly _ . Tsundere? That was the level of cutting insult this guy just could not tolerate?

Gabe entered the living room just in time to hear the front door slam behind Trist.

“What was  _ that _ about?” Sophie asked.

“That was definitely something,” Bee pointed out. “He looked angry.”

“Okay, I admit, that one was definitely my fault,” Gabe confessed. “Or at least like, half or a third my fault. The rest is split between Trist for being weird and whoever let Trist watch anime.”

“What did you  _ do _ ?” Sophie asked.

“I called him tsundere.”

Sophie immediately burst out laughing, and Bee looked like she didn’t quite know what emotion to feel. Gabe was kind of with her on that one. On the one hand it was absolutely absurd, but on the other, well… absurd or not, Trist had seemed genuinely upset. It being weird and dumb didn’t make his feelings any less real.

“He’s just…” Bee started to say, and then trailed off, not seeming to know how to end that sentence. “I’ll try talking to him.”

Gabe sat down on the other couch. “Thanks. I hope your attempt goes better than mine did.”

“Tsundere, though?” Sophie managed to say when her laughter finally subsided. “I knew that boy had some kind of trauma, but I never would have guessed it was anime related.”

“It’s not,” Bee said quietly. “I think he just got angry because he knows you’re right. He’s been playing you hot and cold, right? I saw him give you those painkillers just now, even if he did chuck them at your head.”

“Yup,” Gabe said. “I told him I was looking for some this morning but we were out, so he bought some. Then I made the mistake of telling him I appreciated it and he got all weird and insisted that it had  _ not _ been any kind of thoughtful gesture. So really things had already been going pretty downhill by the time I called him tsundere.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Bee said, though she didn’t sound sure at all. “Just… don’t call him that again.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. I won’t make that mistake twice.”


End file.
